


Legerdemain

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Series: Thou art no thy lane [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Goodbyes, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Post Reichenbach, Present Tense, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 19:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody likes to say goodbye, but John Watson will always do what needs to be done.</p>
<p>Teaser: <i>Mycroft looks away first, fidgeting with the handle of his umbrella, and if that's his final answer then it's probably for the best John plans never to speak with him again.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Legerdemain

John helps Mrs Hudson pack up the last of the flat, the sharp, almost seaside scent of the packing tape and dust harsh in his sinuses. She's been all a-flutter, still not sure what she's going to _do_ with Sherlock's things.

There's a ring at the door, and she goes down to answer. John sits on the sofa, one last time. He doesn't want to see the stacked boxes, the fine layer of disturbed dust on almost all the flat surfaces.

He doesn't see much of anything with his fingers pressed, hard, against the bridge of his nose.

The creak of the stair alerts him and he straightens up, hand falling to his side; he's not at all surprised to see the tall, suited man following Mrs Hudson. He and Mycroft stare at each other for long heartbeats; John hears Mrs Hudson speaking but doesn't listen to the words. He doesn't need to. He knows why Mycroft is here; without a will, Sherlock's belongings revert to his family.

Mycroft looks away first, fidgeting with the handle of his umbrella, and if that's his final answer then it's probably for the best John plans never to speak with him again.

_I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking._

John's lips tighten, and he feels his Adam's apple jump with the force of his swallow.

A flat full of boxes, packed to the brim, but just things, no sentiment; not that Sherlock's brother has ever been bothered with the petty emotions of ordinary people. There are no answers for him to find in what remains — John has carefully destroyed almost everything truly personal, almost anything that could be discovered and further used against Sherlock's memory.

He gave Sherlock's violin to Mrs Hudson; John had seen it resting, tucked neatly in its case, on her unused armchair when he'd been down for a last cuppa.

"He can take it all," John answers her, slinging his own light haversack up; inside are the few things he can bear to carry away from 221B. He leans over and gives his former landlady a gentle peck on the cheek. "Goodbye, Mrs Hudson."

John brushes past Mycroft without a word, trots down the stairs, and out into an unexpectedly brilliant London day.

Ω

As arranged, he meets Mike Stamford and Bill Murray for coffee about an hour later; the three of them somber. Neither Mike nor Bill has asked him for details; Bill didn't know Sherlock other than through John's blog and the papers, and Mike's grieving in his own right.

More to the point, both of them know why they're not meeting at a pub.

"Still going out to the country, then?" Mike asks.

John gives him a shrug and fakes a crooked smile. "Still can't afford London on an army pension, mate, and I don't think another flatshare is such a good idea."

Mike grimaces, regret and grief in equal parts; John bulls on. "Besides, Bill's cousin was kind enough to find a spot for me at a surgery up in Penrith."

Bill tilts his cup at John. "Glad to do it. And I think it'll do you some good to get out of town for a while, even if you don't settle."

John takes a sip of his own, ignoring the wrinkling of Mike's nose; Mike, he knows, wants him to _settle_ into a teaching position at Barts, but that's not an option.

No more than accepting Harry's help.

The three of them finally break up because John needs to get down to the station. Goodbyes with Mike are simple enough: the words and a quick handshake and done, but Bill corners him just outside the doorway.

"You're not stupid, Mouse," he says, low, "and we both know getting you away from town and the stupid Nosey Parkers is a good idea. But you're not the sort of man who runs, either — I've no idea what you're up to but see to it you don't..."

John nods, and says, mildly, "The CID have my pistol now, anyway."

Bill looks at him through narrowed eyes; like everyone else, trying to read John's tone, figure if he's serious or joking or maybe talking nonsense in his bloody sleep. If John were sure, himself, he might take offense. As it is, he pulls his spine up just a little straighter, his heels in a little closer, and good old Bill straightens as well, frowning just a bit as he loses the moment of intimate worry to ingrained military formality.

"Goodbye, Bill."

They hold the handshake for an extra heartbeat, saying everything they need to say about shared hardships and duty and trust. It's a good way to finish and though he has to consciously summon it up, John's smile feels sincere.

He tugs his haversack higher on his shoulder, nods at them both, and walks down the pavement without looking back.

Ω

Molly meets John at the station; he spares her a moment of sympathy, her face white and drawn above the rather spectacular, intentionally cheery pink of her blouse. His suitcase rests next to her, rough and brown, soft around the middle seams and worn hard around the edges.

She can't look him in the eye.

He leans in and kisses her cheek. She dips her head against her shoulder, offers a fluttering smile backed by welling tears.

"It's all right," he says. "Thank you for bringing my things."

She nods, and abruptly throws her arms around his shoulders; he's sure to the casual onlooker they appear a couple about to be separated for some unknowable period of time. Returning her embrace seems the most natural thing in the world; he sets one hand on the back of her head, feels the softness of her hair and her hard sobs breaking against those locked inside his chest.

"It's _all right_ ," he says again, even though the lie shakes through both of them.

"I should be reassuring you." She says with a strangled little hiccupy laugh muffled by the black linen of his shirt. "I'm so sorry."

He tugs, gently, at her hair, coaxes her to look up at him. She can only manage for a few seconds. He wonders what she thinks he sees, and cuts the thought off before it goes any further.

"Don't be." He presses a brotherly kiss to the corner of her mouth and bends to pick up the haversack at their feet, leaving the suitcase undisturbed for the moment. "Here."

He opens the top flap and with a soft crinkle of paper pulls out the skull — bookend, mantel decoration, hiding place, _friend_ — and hands it to her. She cradles it as though it were a kitten, though they both know how strong a skull is, how much force it takes to shatter one.

She bites her lip, looks up at him.

"John —" she starts, at the same moment a voice on the PA declares the arrival of the northbound train, and he shakes his head and stoops to take the handle of his case.

"Goodbye, Molly. Keep it safe for him."

She can't even nod, just stares at him with stricken eyes and wrinkled brow, and steps aside with the cranium pressed close to her chest.

Ω

John tries to let the the rhythm of the train lull him into a doze, at first, hoping that closing the last doors on his life in London has eased the suspended uncertainty that's been interfering with his sleep ever since his thoughts started coming together again. He gives it up as a bad job perhaps more quickly than he should.

Others had pushed him through that first shell-shocked afternoon, vivid and choppy as any of his nightmares of Afghanistan. But the ability to analyse had crept back to him in stages, after, during those silent, barefoot days in 221B. Time spent chewing over everything Sherlock said in his lie of a note again and again, until the real message had leapt out at him, clenching the lower chambers of his heart in a flutter of arrhythmic tachycardia.

_I am a_ fake. _It's a trick. Just a_ magic trick.

Eleven simple words. John leans his head back against the coarse cloth of the seat and stares up at the curved metal ceiling of the rail car; too much blood and history drawn indelibly behind his lids to comfort himself by closing his eyes.

John has never doubted Sherlock, but the more he thinks about his "confession" the more he realizes how many things Sherlock could not possibly have faked: bloody Mycroft and his bloody cameras. Baskerville. Buckingham _Palace_. And unless Mike had been conspiring somehow, no way for Sherlock to know _who_ to research before that first meeting.

No, the — the fall itself sent the only message the rest of the world wanted to hear, confirming the papers' accusations in the bloodiest possible way. So the words, all those other words... had to hide something else, some meaning Sherlock trusted John would eventually understand.

If John hasn't _analysed_ himself right round the bend; perceived a message that isn't there out of misplaced, dangerous hope.

Blinking at the ceiling, he rubs fingers against the aching hinges of his jaw.

If he's wrong, then Mycroft won't hold John's gaze out of bloody-well-deserved guilt for bribing Moriarty with the most volatile substance on earth. And poor Molly is simply shattered by the death and betrayal of the man she idolized most.

A _fake_ , a _magic trick_.

But if he's right, then Mycroft is _still_ the stupidest genius on the face of the planet, and Molly is barely holding herself together between unshakable loyalty and unbreakable promises.

To ask Mycroft would gain him nothing. To ask Molly would be cruel.

To ask Sherlock...well. John's been relegated to watching the show unfold.

His fingers curl and uncurl against his trousers.

_Stay exactly where you are. Don't move. Keep your eyes fixed on me._

Table magic on a life-and-death scale; keep talking so the audience forgets to watch hands or cards or coins. Misdirection, the empty hand distracting from the full.

John's phone buzzes in his breast pocket, startling him; he'd forgotten putting it on vibrate when he was with Mike and Bill. He slips the phone out, a moment of fibrillation feathering about his chest before he sees the name and something cold and ugly closes around his throat.

_I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs Hudson. And Molly._

Someone had to be the Doubting Thomas.

**Molly tells me you've left London. — GL**

John's hand tightens on the plastic. The memory of bone and cartilage crunches under his knuckles.

He reminds himself, again, not to be too hard on Lestrade; the man did what he'd had to do in the face of uncomprehending subordinates and uncompromising superiors. All Lestrade's cases — and Gregson's, and one or two of Dimmock's — are undergoing internal review. Anything that had so much of a trace of Sherlock on or around it. Dozens, over nearly seven years.

_...because Sherlock Holmes is a great man. And I think one day, if we're very, very lucky, he might even be a good one._

John knows Lestrade has to be struggling with Sherlock's fall, and the part he played in it. His doubt was manipulated, understandable, and in some ways inevitable — but, at the moment, John doesn't have it in him to forgive.

**Couldn't stay. Took a job in the country.**

Sticking to the facts, as far as he cares to share them.

John gazes out the window, a dozen good clack- _clacks_ of the track rumbling through him before he starts typing again.

**Goodbye, Greg.**

John sends the text and immediately shuts the phone down. He tucks it away in his pack, next to Sherlock's untitled composition for Irene Adler, the narrow leather lockpick case Molly rescued from the pocket of his coat, and the hand-carved box that had held his syringes.

Sighing, John tugs the case notebook from the outer pocket of the pack, and riffles through the pages; notes, investigations, things he'd meant to transcribe to the blog and never got around to. Never will, now.

He comes to a blank page near the end, uncaps his pen, and starts writing.

  


  


I think I know what you were telling me, now, what you wanted me to pass along. I did as you asked; I told Lestrade, Mrs Hudson. And Molly.

Did you want me — us — to suss it out? Did you think anyone but your brother would understand?

I could have stayed, could have tried to clear your name, but whether I'm wrong or right about your trick I'm damned sure tilting at tabloid windmills is the last thing you would have wanted me to do. You don't want me to amend the lie.

I know Moriarty pushed you off that roof, magic trick or not. Pushed you as surely as if he'd had his hand right on your back. I know that somehow, he lined up the pieces so that you had to back the lie and you had to fall.

Somehow, this is about protecting me, and God knows who else. One of the thugs Mycroft warned us about was helping Mrs Hudson with a little repair on the stairs when I arrived. Did you arrange that message that she'd been shot, a ruse guaranteed to get me to leave?

Why am I even asking. Of course you did.

You're an arse. I'm no innocent and we were always better together, even when I didn't — couldn't — follow your train of thought, your grand egotistical plan.

I don't know what to do, now. Go on, obviously; I can hear you sneering in the back of my head. Because, just as obviously, there is reason here, of some sort. Still assuming I'm right, that I'm not driving myself mad chasing a ghost. Chasing this strange, angry sort of hope.

I have to believe you know what you're doing. That this masquerade serves some larger purpose.

I said one more miracle, Sherlock, and I still trust you'll come through. But it shouldn't take a miracle for you to find me, even if no one else will know where to look when I don't turn up in Penrith; and if it will cock up your plans to come to me, it still won't take a miracle for you to find a way to let me know I haven't gone spare.

You trusted me with your last message. Trust me enough to show me you're alive, somehow.

The last thing you said to me was "Goodbye, John," and I said "No." And if you leave it there, you bloody bastard

  


  


Miles and moments tick by and John sits with pen hovering over the page, unable to find an ending to that sentence that won't amount to the goodbye he refuses to say.

" _No._ "

He jams the cap back down on the biro, wraps the elastic back around the book and tucks it away, next to his heart. The train follows its southbound course; John swallows and swallows again, watching the countryside sweep by until the setting sun leaves behind nothing more than a dampened blur of shadows.

Δ

**Author's Note:**

> Shinychimera was originally just going to have a beta on this, but as always her contribution is just too critical for me to allow that. We welcome constructive criticism.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Illustration for Legerdemain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/479383) by [moonblossom graphics (moonblossom)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonblossom/pseuds/moonblossom%20graphics)




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